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Submission + - Record-breaking galaxy found in deep Hubble image (discovermagazine.com)

Submitted by
The Bad Astronomer
The Bad Astronomer writes: "Astronomers using Hubble Space Telescope have found a galaxy at the very edge of the Universe: the light from this far-flung object has been traveling a whopping 13.1 billion years to get here! The galaxy appears as a non-descript dot in the infrared Hubble Ultra Deep Field taken using the Wide Field Camera 3, but a spectrum taken using a ground-based telescope confirms that we're seeing this object as it was a mere 600 million years after the Big Bang itself."

Submission + - Japan's Latest Rockstar Singer is a 3D Hologram (singularityhub.com)

Submitted by kkleiner
kkleiner writes: Hatsune Miku is a Japanese pop diva who’s just started to play massive stadium concerts to sold out crowds. Her hair is blue, she dresses like Sailor Moon, and she’ll only appear in concerts via a 3D ‘hologram’. Oh, and did I forget to mention that she’s completely fictional? Created by Crypton Future Media, Hatsune Miku and her virtual colleagues have gone on limited tours in Japan and virtual avatar song writing is a growing trend all over the world.
Science

Submission + - Synthetic life created by scientists (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by Itninja
Itninja writes: How long before the phrase is seen as prophetic?: Humans are not longer born....they are grown.

From the article: The researchers copied an existing bacterial genome. They sequenced its genetic code and then used synthesis machines to chemically construct a copy.

"We've now been able to take that synthetic chromosome, transplant it into a recipient cell — a different organism," Dr Venter told BBC News. "As soon as this new software goes into the cell, that cell reads that software and converts the cell into the species specified in that genetic code."
Science

Submission + - Climate change and the integrity of science (guardian.co.uk) 2

Submitted by blau
blau writes: From an article in The Guardian commenting on an "Open letter: Climate change and the integrity of science" published in today's issue of Science magazine:

"A group of 255 of the world's top scientists today wrote an open letter aimed at restoring public faith in the integrity of climate science.

In a strongly worded condemnation of the recent escalation of political assaults on climatologists, the letter, published in the US Journal Science and signed by 11 Nobel laureates, attacks critics driven by "special interests or dogma" and "McCarthy-like" threats against researchers. It also attempts to set the record straight on the process of rigorous scientific research."

Comment Re:many words (Score 1) 256

by blau (#30859638) Attached to: For GUIs, Just the Right Degree of Realism

And at the end of it I still don't know how abstract a picture should be - unless you count "just abstract enough" as an answer!

I guess if it was possible to say "This is the perfect icon! All icons have to be like this!" it would already have been done and there wouldn't be so many bad UIs around.

Comment Re:Nuclear power plants are offtopic, but here goe (Score 1) 262

by blau (#30247152) Attached to: The World's First Osmotic Power Plant

expense: nuclear power costs very little. CHECK. http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf02.html

Oh really? According to an independent (can't be said of your sources) report nuclear energy is not cheap and probably never will be. (See The World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2009 [PDF]).

ouput: do i even need to provide a reference on this one? nuclear power runs whole nations such as france

Such as? France is the only country that's consuming mostly nuclear energy (see the Statistical Review of World Energy 2009 that I linked to some posts above). Most of the worlds consumed energy is oil, gas and coal. Nuclear energy isn't even close.

it would seem good sir, that you are the one spreading bullshit. I call you out on your anti nuke nonsense, you know nothing about the subject past what greenpeace has shoved down your throat.

Wow. Playing the Greenpeace Card = instant +5. Well played Sir.
Censorship

Modern Warfare 2 Not Recalled In Russia After All 94

Posted by Soulskill from the it's-the-thought-that-counts dept.
thief21 writes "After claims that console versions Modern Warfare 2 had been recalled in Russia due to complaints from politicians and the gaming public over the infamous airport slaughter scene, it turns out the stories were completely untrue. Activision never released a console version of the game in Russia." Instead, they simply edited the notorious scene out of the PC version. They did this of their own volition, since Russia doesn't have a formal ratings committee.

Comment Re:Who needs metadata any more (Score 1) 160

by WWWWolf (#29348571) Attached to: Google Books As "Train Wreck" For Scholars

...when you have Search? Pick your own keywords.

Why do they build nuclear reactors, when you can get electricity from the wall socket these days?

Seriously, though: Correct, systematic and well-defined metadata makes searching more effective. Lack of metadata means you're going to comb through the results yourself looking for the stuff that matches the criteria that the search engine doesn't let you enter.

Comment Re:RTFLDP (Score 1) 347

by itomato (#29341111) Attached to: Running Old Desktops Headless?

I quess it depends on your machine and your grub version.

http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/grub.html#Serial-terminal

Here's an interesting tidbit on the subject: http://www.advogato.org/person/pedro/diary/64.html

However, grub does not understand USB *anyway*, so unless you are lucky enough to have a BIOS which supports USB serial ports as native devices (like it does for keyboards and mice), your USB dongle will not allow you to control your bootloader. Period. This is because making a USB serial port work requires a functional USB subsystem, which is more than a bootloader is supposed to handle. As of now, it's not clear if or when grub will support USB. So laptops are screwed.

But a desktop machine can us a PCI card, right? You'd like to think that, wouldn't you? Unfortunately, grub only knows the standard IO ports (memory addresses and IRQs) for COM 1-4 (units 0-3 in grub parlance) -- which means if your PCI serial card appears at a different address, grub will not be able to use it. There is code in the pipe for PCI expansion serial ports in grub, but I'm not sure of its status. It doesn't work in my Hardy Heron Ubuntu, although I'm hopeful that this will work reliably in the future. (If so, then PCI cards could be a good solution for "desktop" PCs.)

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